I would like to introduce you all to a new site I am currently making. It’s a tutorial repository for blender. I have been working on it for 6 months now and it has taken many different forms in terms of layout. But I am happy to say I like its current style enough to keep it. The unique part to the site is that users can upload their own tutorials. They can either enter the youtube or vimeo embedd codes, or write their own tutorials in the text tutorial section.
The site isn’t fully complete yet but I would like to get some people on board to start uploading a few tutorials to get the ball rolling and to give me some motivation as there hasn’t been much interest in the site.
A few features of the site include:
Registration
Upload Text and Video Tutorials
PM system
Easy navigation
Multiple categories
View user profiles
Add tutorials to favorites
report tutorials
comments system
rating system
All features (except javascript features like the menus and login panel) have been designed and built by me so I am heavily proud of it and want it to be a success. I have seen many blender tutorial sites that have failed because of the lack of time invested into them.
When the site is finished I will be moving to a paid host, but for now I will be sticking with the free host.
So I look forward to hearing your comments or crits or any feedback.
IMHO you need to add a search function and tags. The tutorial area is too narrow and catagories and news too wide. Have you tried to have text+screenshot heavy tutorials in this format?
For me it doesn’t make sense to have the tutorial video shown both in the tutorial section and the catagories(smaller) at the same time.
thanks for the comments. The tutorial vid in the sidebar is a featured tutorial. I was thinking of getting rid of it and now I may.
A search function will be implemented soon, i just wanted to finish up other features before adding new ones.
Any yes there is an issue with text tutorials but I am thinking of just getting rid of the right hand sidebar when a user views them, which is why all of the important content is in the left sidebar.
hes currently working on listing/adding of embedded video links I believe,
theres already a small listing of blender links there,
and it’s open to reg/adding of more, so anyones welcome to join in.
I tried to submit a tutorial and got the following error message:
Can’t connect to local MySQL server through socket ‘/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock’ (2)
Also, when creating an account I kept getting an error message until I shortened my password. So you might want to post a character limit near the text field and also maybe limit the number of characters for the field. Maybe the error with submitting a tutorial is a similar issue with character limits?
thanks for the comments. The password thing i will sort out immediatly.
The tutorial submit is due to a few changes i made to the file structure. I just need to change a few lines to match the new structure. Will get to it now. Thanks for letting me know. If you come accross anything else please tell me.
Just to let you know all said problems have been fixed.
And thanks to those of you who have signed up. I hope to see more of you there soon(and tutorials)
Added a delete marked option in the pm system
Shortened the width of the left sidebar(thanks for the advice tin2tin)
fixed dimensional layout in the add text tutorial page
added information for the text tutorials status in the right sidebar
edited main page to include text tutorials display
And a few other bits and peices(mainly descriptions for things and a few links)
Going to ad a section in the my account section where you can view a listy of your tutorials.
When viewing your own tutorial you will have an option to edit said tutorial.
New rankings pages have been added to show the most popular text and video tutorials.
Rankings are done for the best 10 and ordered by the rating of each.
Some of the links act really weired, they are either broken or lead to pages that brings up warnings (using mcafee siteadvisor) and they don’t do one of the two, they do both, but vary from time to time.
I can list the links that I’ve got problems with:
Competition
About
Contact
Text tutorials
Other than that I’ve got trouble with opening any of the text tutorials and the Tutorials link in site statistics says that there are four tutorials but when I click it, it says zero.
From a user’s perspective it doesn’t matter that much if a tutorial is a video tutorial or a text tutorial, as long as it teaches you how to do whatever you’re after. Therefore it doesn’t make sense to me to separate video and text tutorials.
Tutorials can also come in other formats like Wink flash or be a description and a link to other sites hosting their own (not-to-be-mirrored) tutorials.
well some people who are going to upload tutorials only have text tutorials, and some only have youtube or vimeo tutorials, which is why i offer both.
And while tutorials do come in other formats, these are the most common ones which is why i support them initially. if there are users who wish to upload different formats then i will allow them formats if and when needed.
after a lot of work i have rearranged files and changed coding to reflect. these changes arent really that niticable to you but make things more organised and easier for me.
Stuff like tutorials both text and video sharing the same database table rather than 2 different ones.
Also added the CKeditor to the pm system for formatted emails.
Just a few more links and little bugs to work out.
